In an existing wireless local area network (WLAN) system standard, an association identifier (AID) of a station (STA) is a fixed AID that is allocated at a time and perpetually used.
When an STA is associated with an access point (AP), the AP randomly allocates an unused AID to the STA, indicating that the STA is associated with it (the AP). In this way, the STA and the AP start to interact and communicate. In a conventional WLAN Basic Service Set, (BSS), a quantity of STAs is small, a frequency of using an AID is not high, and fixed AIDs do not cause a major impact. However, in an IEEE 802.11ah scenario, allocation of fixed AIDs causes a huge overhead to a system because a large number of STAs exist and ongoing services of each STA may change with time.